"Hide me, my friend, from the consciousness of my folly, or let it speak till its expiation be made, till I have banished Savillon from my mind ... Must I then banish him from my mind?"

Metaphor in Context

I have now time to think, and power to express my thoughts--It is midnight, and the world is hushed around me! After the agitation of this day, I feel something silently sad at my heart, that can pour itself out to my friend!

Savillon! cruel Savillon!--but I complain, as if it were falsehood to have forgotten her whom perhaps he never loved.

She too must forget him--Maria! he is the husband of another! That sea-captain, who dined with my father today, is just returned from Martinique. With a beating heart, I heard him questioned of Savillon. With a beating heart I heard him tell of the riches he is said to have acquired by the death of that relation with whom he lived; but judge of its sensations, when he added, that Savillon was only prevented by that event, from marrying the daughter of a rich planter, who had been destined for his wife on the very day his uncle died, and whom he was still to marry as soon as decency would permit. "And before this time, (said the stranger) he must be her husband."

Before this time! --While I was cherishing romantic hopes! or, at least, while, amidst my distress, I had preserved inviolate the idea of his faith and my own. --But whither does this delusion carry me? Savillon has broken no faith; to me he never pledged it. Hide me, my friend, from the consciousness of my folly, or let it speak till its expiation be made, till I have banished Savillon from my mind.

Must I then banish him from my mind? Must I forget the scenes of our early days, the opinions we formed, the authors we read, the music we played together? There was a time when I was wont to retire from the profanity of vulgar souls, to indulge the remembrance! &line;

I heard somebody tap at my door. I was in that state of mind which every thing terrifies; I fancy I looked terrified, for my mother, when she entered, begged me, in a low voice, not to be alarmed. (pp. 93-6)

Henry Mackenzie, Julia de Roubigné, A Tale in a Series of Letters. Published by The Author of The Man of Feeling, and The Man of The World, 2 vols. (London: W. Strahan, T. Cadell, W. Creech, 1777). <Link to ECCO>